A Single Div - <AUTHOR> http://a.singlediv.com/ <comment><USER2> I haven't seen so much nay-saying on HN in a while. It's like because there's an artistic element this or it's pure-web tech the appreciation of a cool hack and interesting exploration of a technology is completely gone. This is a classic example of a "hack", pushing CSS slightly beyond what it was intended for and potentially what is practical.

But it's beautiful and clever, and if you truly can't appreciate it, that's sad.

<comment><USER3> > But it's beautiful and clever, and if you truly can't appreciate it, that's > sad.

Interesting. Is it as sad as the fact that one still cannot vertically center a div in CSS without using elaborate hacks?

<comment><USER4> I believe Flexbox, which is supported by most major browsers, allows vertically centering content without hacks:

[http://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by- flexbox/demos/vertic...](http://philipwalton.github.io/solved-by- flexbox/demos/vertical-centering/)

<comment><USER5> [http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox](http://caniuse.com/#feat=flexbox)

Until most IE users upgrade to 11, it's not usable by those of us who can't exclude a large chunk of our users.

<comment><USER6> has caniuse.com replaced quirksmode now as the canonical source of this kind of information?

<comment><USER7> caniuse.com provides broad outlines, quirksmode is much more specific and PPK hasn't really worked on the new non-mobile stuff so far, as far as I've seen. Nothing on flexbox for instance, although he does have box-sizing: padding- box.

caniuse is good for "is there a chance this will work?" or "could I use $some_feature in my new project?", quirksmode is "why doesn't my use of $some_feature work in $pile_of_shit_browser?!?!?!!!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those who don't understand. Each image is not in fact an image, it's css styles applied to a single html element. Very impressive.

[http://i.imgur.com/V8HYrhK.png](http://i.imgur.com/V8HYrhK.png)

<comment><USER9> It's amazing how powerful css is. I recently worked with changing the checkboxes on a form of mine to look like the iOS7 toggle. Check it out: [http://designcouch.com/home/why/2013/09/19/ios7-style- pure-c...](http://designcouch.com/home/why/2013/09/19/ios7-style-pure-css- toggle/)

<comment><USER10> It's amazing how CSS lets you do stuff like this but still can't center things easily.

Nice demo by the way, but why on earth did you use an id rather than a class?

<comment><USER7> > It's amazing how CSS lets you do stuff like this but still can't center > things easily.

It's trivial to do if you can use flexbox. And I do mean _trivial_ , we're talking 3 properties including "opting into" flexbox: [http://jsfiddle.net/1vd9xLdy/](http://jsfiddle.net/1vd9xLdy/) (note: didn't bother with prefixes or older syntaxes so IE >= 11, Firefox >= 28, Chrome >= 29, Opera 12.1 or >= 19)

<comment><USER10> It's not vertically centered in the _window_ , and that's using a CSS feature that's only fully-supported in IE11. This trickery is all box shadows and border radii, which go back to IE8.

Flex box is great, but it's interesting that CSS implemented gaussian blurred inset shadows and 3d transforms before it addressed centering (incompletely).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you read [https://github.com/lynnandtonic/a-single-div/blob/gh- pages/R...](https://github.com/lynnandtonic/a-single-div/blob/gh- pages/README.md#but-but), she obviously knows this is not the most practical way to make illustrations. Maybe its for fun and research? Some harsh people on here today.

</comment><comment><USER12> What shitty fucking whiners you lot are. This is a fun technical experiment. It's clearly not advocating for some sort of production environment usage of pure CSS/single-div imagery in lieu of SVGs. It's a mental challenge and a fun "I wonder if" experiment.

Any of you busily shouting high from the mountaintops how this is useless and pointless and stupid and derf, don'tyouknowthisisn'tpractical should stop well short of daring to call yourselves engineers, and even shorter of calling yourselves creators, for a key tenet of a great engineer is occasionally looking at absurd challenges and seeing if they can make something happen.

I'm glad most of this trash has since been downvoted into oblivion where it belongs.

<comment><USER13> Counterpoint to "not practical": We have a dashboard at work that displays, amongst other things, the CI build status. For reasons I won't go into, we cannot change the HTML. We can change the CSS though, using Stylish. The "build failed" / "build succeeded" icons were incredibly non-obvious and developers weren't paying much attention to them.

Now, through a series of seriously horrendous CSS hacks, they display as really nice flat design green checks and crosses. Given that this dashboard only ever displays in literally one browser, on one big screen, it was completely acceptable to use CSS hacks to achieve the look I wanted.

It was sites such as this one that helped me figure out how to twist a single HTML element into what I needed. Particular shout-out to [http://nicolasgallagher.com/pure-css-gui- icons/demo/](http://nicolasgallagher.com/pure-css-gui-icons/demo/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am unmoved by the many "... in pure CSS" posts, but I guess they are the equivalent of "HTTP server in x86 assembly" for CSS designers.

<comment><USER15> I like this, it's neat art. However I must agree that I'm unmoved, I invite anyone who thinks this is particularly clever to visit www.pouet.net for a bit of re-calibration.

It's all relative.

<comment><USER16> looked at pouet.net. Not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing?

<comment><USER15> Ok fair point I shouldn't have been so glib as puet is pretty horrible from a web design standpoint.

It's a website for the demoscene, where people do stuff like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg) in 177 kilobytes.

<comment><USER17> They do that complete render in 177kb...? I remember crack intros but that's insane. Is this in C?

<comment><USER18> I don't get the fascination with Farbrausch. While I respect and admire the feat which I'm unable to pull of myself, there are comparatively much better realisations both in terms of art and technique. See the following 64k demos:

\- chaos theory - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfuierUvx1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfuierUvx1A)

\- turtles all the way down - sub dream [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48t2R2hEJM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48t2R2hEJM)

\- the timeless — [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwFVlNytq0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwFVlNytq0Q)

\- turtles all the way down - brain control - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKmqkh9bb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBKmqkh9bb8)

<comment><USER19> Rewatching those reminded me of how phenomenal Demovibes 9 is: [http://www.demovibes.org/dv_info.htm](http://www.demovibes.org/dv_info.htm)

As far as the Farbrausch comment, I think the appeal of Debris, in particular, is the stunning audio component of the demo. Chaos Theory is beautiful, but the audio/video components don't feel as tightly integrated as some of Farbrausch's work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are really impressive. Are you using a program to compile these to CSS or are you just a wizard?

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting to see CSS coming into it's own. Sure it's not the most practical thing at the moment, but I could certainly see some smaller-scale uses being useful today (like iconography and such).

Makes me wonder if we'll begin to see icon/image libraries released with pure css versions.

<comment><USER22> Considering PNG has been around since 1996 and HTML pages can load arbitrary images and fonts, we don't need pure CSS icons. We have purpose-built formats for images. This CSS image project is just for fun.

The whole "[something] in pure CSS" began when people realized how awful table-based layouts are. First it was layouts, then full-blown designs.

This is almost like the most extreme version of that trend, almost to the point of parody.

<comment><USER23> While that may be true for this site, I do think CSS could be very useful for icons, since the it's infinitely zoomable, and a PNG isn't.

<comment><USER24> SVG? Vectorized, far better browser support than advanced CSS, advanced WYSIWYG editor support.

<comment><USER23> SVG is another obvious contender, but it needs a separate file (or a cryptic data url), which is not always a disadvantage, but sometimes may be.

It seems like CSS has many of the same possibilities as SVG, although expressed a bit more obscurely. But I can imagine that an SVG-to-CSS converter would be possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would love to see a blog post detailing some of these techniques.

<comment><USER26> looks like the big trick is rendering to the background image:

        #mario-mushroom div {
          width: 170px;
          height: 140px;
          margin-left: -85px;
          margin-top: -90px;
          background-image: radial-gradient(circle at 50% 120%, rgba(0,0,0,0.7) 23%, rgba(0,0,0,0) 48%), linear-gradient(30deg, rgba(0,0,0,0.4) 10%, rgba(0,0,0,0) 20%), radial-gradient(circle at 50% 33%, #f8f6f7 32%, rgba(255,255,255,0) 32%), radial-gradient(circle at -13% 55%, #f8f6f7 20%, rgba(255,255,255,0) 20%), radial-gradient(circle at 113% 55%, #f8f6f7 20%, rgba(255,255,255,0) 20%), linear-gradient(to bottom, #ef0015 20%, #b2000c 100%);
          border-radius: 140px 140px 80px 80px;
        }

<comment><USER27> Different gradients (sometimes linear, sometimes radial), and/or box-shadow rules like this:

      #camera div:after {
        width: 100px;
        height: 100px;
        margin-left: -20px;
        top: 15px;
        left: 50%;
        z-index: 3;
        background: linear-gradient(45deg, #ccc 40%, #ddd 100%);
        border-radius: 50%;
        box-shadow: 0 3px 2px #999, 1px -2px 0 white, -1px -3px 2px #555, 0 0 0 15px #c2c2c2, 0 -2px 0 15px white, -2px -5px 1px 17px #666, 0 10px 10px 15px rgba(0,0,0,0.3), -90px -51px 1px -43px #aaa, -90px -50px 1px -40px #888, -90px -51px 0 -34px #ccc, -90px -50px 0 -30px #aaa, -90px -48px 1px -28px rgba(0,0,0,0.2), -124px -73px 1px -48px #eee, -125px -72px 0 -46px #666, -85px -73px 1px -48px #eee, -86px -72px 0 -46px #666, 42px -82px 1px -48px #eee, 41px -81px 0 -46px #777, 67px -73px 1px -48px #eee, 66px -72px 0 -46px #666, -46px -86px 1px -45px #444, -44px -87px 0 -38px #333, -44px -86px 0 -37px #ccc, -44px -85px 0 -34px #999, 14px -89px 1px -48px #eee, 12px -84px 1px -48px #999, 23px -85px 0 -47px #444, 23px -87px 0 -46px #888;
      }

Neat results -- I'm not sure how practical these specific techniques are to everyday development, but of course a project like this provides the creator with a strong motivation to seriously master everything available in CSS; and the end result of that has obvious practical use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This was really fun challenging myself not to look at the source and thinking thru how I would do each one myself. Things are not as hierarchical as you might expect. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER29> Relevant: [http://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in- css/](http://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised at the comments. To the person that did this: Great job! This is very neat and shows the kind of boundaries you can push with CSS. So what if this is not practical per se, it does show that you can potentially do simpler things than this in pure CSS and that may, in fact, be practical in some cases. Seeing an example like this makes it abundantly clear that that simple of effect you might be wondering if is possible to do in CSS is definitely because clearly this exists.

Besides that, this is HackerNews; it's relevant.

</comment><comment><USER31> And still less verbose than SVG.

</comment><comment><USER32> Very cool. Kind of funny if you open it in something old, like IE9, just to see. Some of them are close, but none of them work 100%. Kind of like failing the old Acid test.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is wizardry.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could someone please enlighten me as to what I am looking at? The images are nice, and ...?

<comment><USER35> That's clever. It didn't even slow done my modest laptop.

<comment><USER34> So would it be possible to have an SVG ==> CSS exporter which would lighten the load on most browsers? Is there always a performance 'gain' in using CSS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is pretty cool, the attention to detail is great. I did something similar a while ago - [http://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in- css](http://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css)

Don't let the SVG naysayers get you down. Yes SVG would have been a better tool for the job but its not about that, its about pushing CSS to it's a limits and that what you've done. This is an awesome hack!

</comment><comment><USER37> Awesome!!! This is absolute Hacking!!!

</comment><comment><USER38> Open this on Internet Explorer LOL! Try from IE6 until IE 11. You can watch the evolution of SingleDiv

</comment><comment><USER39> maybe this will actually work in more browsers than svgs do. I tried about 15 inkscape-made svgs the other days, really simple clipart, and out of 3 (current!) browsers most of them rendered differently :-( One svg was different in all 3 :-(

</comment><comment><USER40> Tested

IE9 is not fully supported. And doesn't support IE8 and below.

But It's still wonderful.

<comment><USER41> That's not necessarily a drawback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How do they create two eyes out of one :after in the mushroom?

<comment><USER43> By using multiple box-shadows.

      box-shadow: 8px 0 #312114, 38px 0 #312114;

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What happens if you turn the web standards and css time back on this: [https://twitter.com/secutor/status/504591841447399424](https://twitter.com/secutor/status/504591841447399424) Amazingly pictures how hard it is to develop anything cross IE platform...

<comment><USER45> I fail to see your point. I don't understand what these clever uses of CSS that may or may not be used in a production environment has to do with old IE development. It would be like complaining that developing the film from a digital camera shows the pain of painting realistic images onto canvas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> shouldn't SVG be more relevant for this ?

</comment><comment><USER47> Artsy!

</comment><comment><USER48> Can't believe this.

</comment><comment><USER49> Only CSS? cool

</comment><comment><USER50> I saw 19 divs when I clicked on view source.

<comment><USER50> A bit of context would be nice. I gather from the comments this is some neat css hack. Without that, I had no idea what the page is about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Great work.

</comment><comment><USER52> What is the point of doing that instead of using SVG?

<comment><USER53> you're not allowed to ask that these days, we have to celebrate using inferior means for the sake of doing so.

<comment><USER52> The author commented: [https://twitter.com/lynnandtonic/status/504378544349126656](https://twitter.com/lynnandtonic/status/504378544349126656)

 _> Don't worry folks, I do know what SVG is. ;)_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> <google-maps></google-maps>

boom. see more here: [http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- elements/dem...](http://www.polymer-project.org/components/paper- elements/demo.html)

</comment><comment><USER55> Making images in css is like making a game engine in cobol. it wasn't a good language/model to begin with, and this is a particularly difficult application of the subject that only occurs to people because we're stuck with the technology.

<comment><USER56> I think this kind of thing isn't born out of necessity, since we're locked in with the tech, but more because its a challenging experiment that requires some pretty clever CSS to accomplish. You should certainly not do this in the wild.

<comment><USER55> I didn't mean that this is done out of _necessity_ , I mean people only give a half-baked mess of standards that is modern web-layout/css the time of day because it's foisted upon us.

If CSS were just another layout engine for just another platform, people would laugh it out of the room and not bother with this kind of artistic stunts.

CSS does not deserve the kind of respect that would go into this sort of craftmanship.

<comment><USER22> Some people like to do things just to see if they can do them. This project is interesting not just because CSS is not meant to do this, but also because CSS is so half baked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I came in expecting this to be an example of a website without tons of nested <div> elements- the problem that html5 was supposed to solve but didn't.

<comment><USER58> > the problem that html5 was supposed to solve but didn't

I always thought html5 solved it, but then came bootstrap and got us back to div-hell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The first couple of these all have before and after pseudo elements. If you're going to use those its kind of cheating calling it a single div when you have 3 styleable elements

<comment><USER60> I disagree - you still only have one element in markup which is the whole point.

<comment><USER61> But when you're using CSS to turn one element into three... what is the "whole point", exactly?

<comment><USER62> You're using CSS. That's the point. Many people still think CSS is still stuck in 2003. It's still limited, but it's come a long way... Heck, with just CSS you can have a webpage react to your turning off the lights on your phone.

<comment><USER61> Sure... but it's specifically using CSS to add extra elements. So it makes the "just one div" thing feel a little silly. Surely you could do "just no divs" and do the same trick on the <body> tag?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> They are really nice but I really don't see the point why they are implemented in css. Most of the images make use of the capability of directly using gradients in the background-image property. Of course it could be easily replaced by the appropriate svg element.

For the lollypop shadow I would make use of the 3D transformation capabilities of CSS3. AFAIK svg is only capable of affine transformations (why?) while CSS3 can handle perspective transformations too.

<comment><USER64> By creating images in css you don't have to load any additional assets. But I suspect these are more just for the author to show off her skills :) *EDIT his -> her

<comment><USER65> AFAIK you can embed images in CSS using data URIs, so there goes that argument and only the show-off one remains ;)

<comment><USER64> You can do that, but I think embedded images are slightly larger than the original because the way they are encoded. But still, images are more practical since these would be a cross-browser nightmare.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Aren't We Talking About LinkedIn? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/style/linkedin-social-media.html <comment><USER2> >"You talk on LinkedIn the same way you talk in the office," said Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor in chief. "There are certain boundaries around what is acceptable."

That is pretty much it. As for the rest of the article it just elaborates on that and I'm not sure I understand what the article is asking.

Maybe I missed it in the article but ... why should we be talking about LinkedIn relative to the other platforms? It is just a site with very a specific use case that isn't what the other sites do.

There's also some insinuation that LinkedIn is some super corporate friendly place. Maybe it is but you know what, AS A USER (not a corporation) I also DO NOT WANT LinkedIn to be Facebook. It might seem corporate friendly, but I'm willing to bet most users want things the way they are as far as not being Facebook as well.

Side note: I really hate questions in titles like this. It's like some attention begging non specific "oh woe is me" social media post. Just tell me what exactly the topic is.

<comment><USER3> There are a few people who are extremely active on LinkedIn, as if it were Facebook. I get their posts and articles and notes, and am in some bizarre way slightly bothered by it. Why are you cluttering my interface into what should be a well-designed, single-purpose, focused interaction and experience? This is not where I come to read about your breakfast, exercise, or even life philosophy :-/

I also do not want to be "friends with my grandma or neighbour" on LinkedIn...

<comment><USER4> I don't think activity is bad on LinkedIn, if it's relevant. Some of the best articles I've read in 2019 haven't been in places like Medium, Dev.to and all those other "blogs that are mostly just wordy twitter opinion posts" places. It's been on LinkedIn. I've also seen some fairly interesting discussions on things like ageism in the workplace, hiring practices and some such and I've seen a lot of people find jobs, make sales or simply share code by reaching out. All that is great in my personal opinion.

If I see you posting one of those "a great leader..." or any meme/Facebook types post, you're removed as a connection instantly however. Because I really don't want my LinkedIn feed to turn into Facebook. That's not activity though, it's a matter of what content people share, and I value a lot of activity if it's interesting.

But maybe I'm alone in this?

<comment><USER5> Yup. To me LI is a necessary evil, a online CV. Anything like that is an instant unfollow.

<comment><USER6> it used to be.. it evolved. Find some people that you admire, and follow them. See what they say. Interact with them. see what you get out of it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I absolutely am on LinkedIn. My only accounts online are HN and LinkedIn. While I agree that it has excessive recruiter spam, I politely respond to every single one of them, telling them where my career is, and what I would need to move. It only takes a minute to do so, and builds a network. Admittedly, most cannot meet my needs, but I have connections to almost every company in my area, so if I ever do need to move, it is not difficult to get rolling. I have found every single job I've held since 2007 from LinkedIn (Admittedly, that is only 3.)

But I don't talk on LinkedIn. I don't 'like' anything, I don't engage with any posts. I'd wager that 90% of what I see on the feeds is just marketing blurbs from my connections' employers. It isn't meaningful to me, so I mostly ignore it.

For me, LinkedIn is a great place to hold my resume, maintain connections to recruiters and former co-workers... and that is it.

<comment><USER8> Same. I actually wrote the Ask A Manager site to see if I was being rude by just blocking people I don't know - if that had the potential to cost me down the road. Her response was that they expect that, so I feel free to use LinkedIn less as a social media site and more a living rolodex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hardly look at LinkedIn. Why?

Two reasons:

\- I don't need another Facebook

\- I get so much connection SPAM from LinkedIn that I consider LinkedIn one of the biggest cesspools on the internet. (Mostly recruiters who I've never worked with trying to connect, but sometimes people trying to connect as a way to promote their business.)

If they (LinkedIn) better policed connection SPAM, I'd use it. Maybe I'm in the minority; but constantly getting connection requests from people who I don't know is a major turnoff to me.

That being said, IMO, the observation that LinkedIn has a good tone to its conversations makes it an attractive alternative to platforms like Facebook where the tone turns toxic.

<comment><USER2> Yeah the recruiter spam is terrible.

I'm interested in opportunities... I have zero interest in most of the recruiter contacts I get that are just "spam everyone with a single keyword that matches this job / waste their time".

<comment><USER10> I had a linkedin recruiter tell me about part time job positions at Target, via text message. What part of my resume says I'm looking for part time retail work and wanting it texted to me??

<comment><USER2> I hear ya man.

I worked in the datacenter networking industry for 20 years and changed careers. Some of that time could be called "tech support". Then I decided I wanted to do something new so I went into web development.

So what do I get for spam?:

\- Overnight desktop support roles ... some that talk about windows 98 (what the hell...).

\- Tons of Java inquiries... I don't know Java but JavaScript is on my resume.

\- Tons of semi related web dev roles but looking for Sr. people with 10 years experience and I've got all of 1 year experience.

All total wastes of my time. And that's near 100% of my unsolicited contacts.

<comment><USER11> I get lots of messages from recruiters, but they're either in a neighboring state, or in a part of my state that I live nowhere near.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Linkedin is a platform that seemingly no one except recruiters and "entrepreneurs" actually use as a social network. Linkedin is a great resource when used as a kind of living resume, but it falls pretty flat as a social network because it doesn't really fill any niche that other social media platforms don't.

That said, there is definitely a slimy underbelly of Linkedin that's filled with narcissists and braggadocios who spin self-aggrandizing tall tales. They're mostly harmless, but I could imagine it devolving into something more toxic if it's left unchecked, the way that many other social media platforms have.

There's a great twitter account @StateOfLinkedin that catalogs the most ridiculous of the blow-hards that's pretty entertaining

<comment><USER13> There's a lot of professional humblebragging on LinkedIn, which can have similar depression-inducing effect like FB and Instagram. I think it's much worse effect than recruiters.

<comment><USER14> Only if you look at LinkedIn! I don't know anybody who does.

<comment><USER15> And yet you are here, humblebragging about not using LinkedIn

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No one is talking about LinkedIn because nobody yet looked on the integration of LinkedIn with the Office suite and the privacy implications.

No one is talking about LinkedIn because it's boring. So boring that most people won't open it except when they need to. The conversations are also boring. The most banal as well as the nearly outrageous posts receive the same polite stream of likes and bland congrats comments. No one ever will say anything of merit.

No one is talking about LinkedIn because it isn't really a social network, it is mainly a tool for finding jobs/employees and for business marketing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Over the last 10 years I've got all my jobs thanks to LinkedIn, 2 times through random recruiters, 1 time on my own by looking at jobs. I also receive a lot of appealing offers from people working directly for companies that are hiring (usually startups with 20-100 employees).

I honestly don't understand all the hate on HN. Maybe LinkedIn became useless in the Silicon Valley (I saw a girl from SF the other day on Twitter, a "tech influencer", saying Twitter was the new LinkedIn), or in the US in general (?), but it's still really useful in the rest of the world to find a new job.

I don't use it at all for reading posts and comments tho.

<comment><USER18> They have shady business practices, for one. Also because it feeds clueless recruiters just spamming any developer they can find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember a few years ago we used to talk _a lot_ about LinkedIn, mostly negative things. How scummy they were, how they tried to trick you into entering your gmail password to spam your contacts. LinkedIn definitely wasn't "controversy free".

I don't know about other people, but I'm an IT professional and mostly gave up on LinkedIn. I get the occasional contact from recruiters, but I almost never actively check the website. I classify most of LinkedIn's notifications as spam/noise.

</comment><comment><USER20> I hate linkedIn and will leave it the minute it is no longer required for my professional work. It wouldn't surprise me if others feel the same.

1\. My linkedIn connections include hundreds or possibly even thousands of people I have definitely never opted in to linking with. I don't know where they came from but I remove them at a rate of at least 10 or 20 per day and never seem to run out.

2\. LinkedIn suggests connections derived from underlying data that are really scary from a privacy point of view. Eg for a while it kept recommending I connect with a person who I have literally no digital connection with whatsoever, no connections in common etc and the only way they could connect us is that we used to live at the same physical address. So it knows my address history and his.

3\. I wish I could just automatically unconnect with anyone who reshares motivational posts by Oleg Vishnepolsky. This guys posts drive me absolutely crazy but the trite nonsense keeps infecting my feed because someone will reshare his thoughts about what makes a good boss or whatever. Just no more Oleg Vishnepolsky.

4\. I have definitely seen the fake profile catfish thing attempted on LinkedIn. Presumably other forms of scams that have infested other social media are also growing.

<comment><USER21> For 2, they've publicly posted about how they determine people you might know, it's just a triangle closing algorithm on second degree connections. It's pretty easy to find you and a co-worker with two jumps.

[https://engineering.linkedin.com/teams/data/projects/pymk](https://engineering.linkedin.com/teams/data/projects/pymk)

<comment><USER7> They also have additional data sources to add to their algorithms when people allow their contacts to be read, and you are in their contacts. Or, if people search for you, odds are they know you. Some of the connections can seem spooky, but it is all data-driven.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> IMO LinkedIn is one of the more compelling online social networks for two reasons: 1.) The platform's incentives are well aligned with the user's incentives. The platform makes money if recruiters can make money by offering jobs to users.

You could argue that recruiter spam is a problem but it would then be a problem for the product and the users. Facebook on the other hand has much less incentive to stop selling ads at the user's detriment.

2.) It facilitates social interactions that are not necessarily possible IRL. You can reach out to people of interest even if you don't know them personally. The formality means that we can start conversations with some degree of formality.

</comment><comment><USER23> LinkedIn needs to work on pervasive phishing and identity theft. I recently found out about an account that copied my profile photo, name, and CV information and used that to connect to 500+ people at my company and elsewhere, using my reputation to pitch people on some blockchain diamond Ponzi scheme. The account has been shut down, but I have no idea if the connections have been warned that this was a fake account trying to scam them, who the account had connected to, and if anyone was victimized. Speaking with coworkers, these kinds of scams are common. It doesn't seem like there is even a basic automated check during user signup to see if the account is impersonating someone else who is already in the system.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've long deleted my Facebook account. Tried LinkedIn recently, thinking it won't suck much time and will be a bit more privacy respecting than Facebook and the like--but boy was I wrong. I found LinkedIn more aggressively attention and details grabbing. I felt that it nags us to comment on others post and update our profiles recently. The e-mail notification frequency was so high that I thought to delete the account right away but then found out that we can turn it off selectively. I don't know the plight of Facebook now but it shows us even more reasons to glue to our profile/upgrade to the premium plan like "You've been searched X times this week". The more data and attention they get, more can they make from premium accounts. It's no better from Facebook and such from these two perspectives(attention and privacy).

</comment><comment><USER25> I really don't want to create an account on LinkedIn, but recruiters seem to want it, and I'd like more leads to be picky about, as I wrap up my consulting business.

I tried the HN monthly jobs post... and some startup emailed me to say they'd scraped my info off HN, and created some kind of resume presence for me on their site. (Dear startup person, if I wanted to be on a creepy resume site, I'd be on the one that recruiters actually use.)

</comment><comment><USER26> I deleted my linkedin account couple of years ago.

My main reason for that has been how it is used in doxxing people. After returning to employment after spending a decade being my own boss, I realized that if you have opinion on the internet and no matter how careful you are about expressing it, people are always going to be mad at you for it. And they will do everything in their power to make it uncomfortable for you to keep expressing your opinions. And telling your employer that you have some opinion that they dont agree with is a low hanging fruit.

Hope linkedin introduces better profile visibility controls, where my public profile has extremely or essentially no information. And visibility of private profile can be tuned to my own comfort levels.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am a developer and I also maintain a blog. I share my new blog posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium. Based on my analytics I found love from Twitter and Facebook(shared by others) and Medium but hardly any good feedback/shares from LinkedIn. I kind of got surprised because I was thinking that there are more professionals on LinkedIn than FB or Twitter.

I have stopped sharing there now, hardly share.

</comment><comment><USER28> Personally, I don't talk about LinkedIn because I assume if I say its name aloud all of my acquaintances will be cursed with a lifetime of spam.

</comment><comment><USER29> LinkedIn is the worst content experience of all available social networks, and that's the trade-off here. It's stricter social boundaries, but as the context has shifted to "social selling", it's more of a vapid marketeering platform than genuine thoughtful exchanges. But hey, at least it's less toxic?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone really use LinkedIn for anything else than updating their job experience and replying to (or ignoring) messages from recruiters?

<comment><USER31> Yes. I use it to research people and companies, keep in touch with former coworkers, and to have some good converstions with people, mostly in industry- specific groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm using LinkedIn to stay in touch with a few people network-wise and avoid littering them with too personal information (as on Facebook, Instagram, whatever.)

It would be pretty cool, but they do exactly the same mistake as Facebook. Their timeline does not provide useful information. If you follow a company (because /sometimes/ you want to see what's going on, their posts are as important as the ones from your network. If you see a post from one of your contacts, hit refresh and it is gone.

I recently did my first own post on LinkedIn. Despite discussion from my network, LinkedIn thought it's not important for my timeline.

</comment><comment> lota-putty 2010: Opened an a/c on FaceBook, closed it by that year end.

2011: Opened an a/c on LinkedIn with colleagues, soon Managers posted recommendations on request. Left it defunct there, stop updating profile since.

I always argued team-bonding happens at office during actual office work.

LinkedIn might help if you're between jobs, but then so does job-sites.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is an ad for linkedin and thus a marketing effort on behalf of microsoft. It's not meant to be a serious platform for people to use - it's meant to be a product. I've been on linkedin for a few years and it's only been a waste of time despite plenty of interactions.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's nice it's not being used to undermine democracy. But honestly I'm surprised so few have been put off by the astoundingly aggressive dark patterns the site uses, as I was bombarded with them when going through the sign up flow years ago.

I certainly would not provide personal information to any site behaving that way let alone my professional information and contacts. Just the policy of using my name to spam advertisements to everyone in my life, including serious people, is beyond the pale. I'm surprised that alone does not put more people off.

And when these issues are brought up, the only rejoinder I have ever heard is that hidden somewhere is a link to a vast terms of service document. This of course only confirms the companies comfort with the behavior. And when posted by linkedin users, only serves to tell me the attitude of potential coworkers and employers using the site.

I am honestly astounded that it is so widely used: are there so many people that assume this level of dishonesty is innate to the work environment? Do people feel they must use it regardless in order to survive professionally? Because it's hard to imagine people join enthusiastically or what benefit could compensate for a level of behavior no one would tolerate elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is actually more interesting of a question than it seems on the surface. I think it's weird when people post on linkedin, and am trying to figure out why.

On most social networks, I think there's a surface reason why people are "supposed" to post that makes it not weird. I'm just chatting with friends. I'm engaging with my community. But the emotional reason people post is to influence people to think like they do ("I want people to see me as a thought leader"/"This person is _wrong_ ") or to make people see how great you are ("Look at this cute cafe I went to in Paris"). It's a hunt for validation.

On linkedin, people post for the same reasons, but it's not hidden behind a supposed surface reason. You post on linkedin to make yourself look like a better person to pay for stuff. It's like how on a resume you really ought to brag, but you shouldn't with friends.

</comment><comment><USER36> I closed my LI account last year as I don't derive any benefit from it and was irked by the constant Social Network -like prods it gave me.

32 days later - 2 days after they say they'll permanently delete your details - I found myself having to sign up for it again as someone in Asia had decided to promote themselves as a director in my business. The only way I could get him booted off was by joining up again so I could prove who I was (no such proof required for my apparent boss..).

The odd thing was, it still had quite a lot of my details kept on file, despite having suggested they'd all be deleted.

Now I just ignore its regular emails, including the 10 desperate pleas I've had this year asking if I know someone I once interviewed with about 18 years ago and who evidently still has my email in their address book.

</comment><comment><USER37> For someone who's terrible at remembering people, LinkedIn is a great extended addressbook for "I vaguely remember your name, have we actually met, only emailed, or did I just indirectly hear about you" ?

</comment><comment><USER38> LinkedIn is the most utilitarian of the social networks because it's purpose is to be so. However, LinkedIn has squandered some of its advantages if you ask me, believe it or not I find LinkedIn to be the most promotional of the social networks I frequent, and among the most curated.

It still has great value, I've been able to lean on my shallow LI network for job opportunities and interviews, and it's a great research tool when scoping out new careers. But I'll never go on LI to "waste time", all in all, maybe that's the best part of it.

</comment><comment><USER39> LinkedIn is like a polite Facebook. I feel like LinkedIn is serious enough to keep bored people away. It is like comparing the bar around the corner to the corporate cafeteria.

</comment><comment><USER40> People are talking about LinkedIn.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590585)

</comment><comment><USER41> The LinkedIn advertising product is "interesting" to me based off of my perception of LinkedIn. If the ads are displayed on LinkedIn, I feel likely that the target audiences are:

1\. Recruiters

2\. People looking to be recruited

3\. Sales trying to find out more about a company

So, why would B2B advertising work? If there is a 4th, which is a buyer looking to buy something. But for many industries (tech in particular rarely has job description buyers) this seems to be a strange way to market.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ok,without diving too deep into this,it seems people commenting on this much like the public at large are assuming what you "talk" on the platform or what information you provide is all or most of what they're collecting and correllating.

I disagree with that assumption, what information you provide explicitly will be used in conjuction with infromation you don't explicitly provide. This builds a somewhat precise trail of information to which you have little privy to. Not only that,people who don't use the platform are also targeted as a result of you referncing them on the platform. ML inference aside,a lot is and could be done with what fingerprinting and implicit data collection being done

I believe linkedin scores worse than even facebook for the amount of data they mine and collect. Linkedin,unlike facebook is in a position to shape and impact people's careers and livelihoods so this should not be treated as a minor problem.

This is also why downloading the data google,facebook and the like collect from you means little. I would like to see what correlations and derivations they've presumed based on that dataset!

</comment><comment><USER43> The information that LinkedIn has about me isn't something I care to keep private, i.e. my accomplishments. I don't share any personal information on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn doesn't really ask for any, other than maybe email and phone, but they are hardly important to the overall functionality. I got my most recent job through LinkedIn.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe the lesson is that social media works well when focused on particular topics?

I've just noticed when I join specific subreddits that are more oriented around a specific hobby, the conversations never get political and tend to be mostly civil. This would be things like a specific video game, woodworking, Kotlin, etc. But if I go some place more "regional" where things can get political, like a city, boom - it goes off the rails really quickly, and requires a ton of moderation.

It just seems like LinkedIn is naturally oriented to talking about specific topics that don't get political. Thus, there's probably a fraction of the potential abuse.

I'm not sure there's anything specifically about LinkedIn that's particularly great. I find it mostly trash. It's just not political trash, so isn't such an easy place to manipulate people.

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't it obvious? Nobody posts anything except the most anodyne corporate- friendly pabulum to LinkedIn.

<comment><USER46> Spot on.

I had to google the meaning of 'anodyne' but i knew it was going to mean something along the lines of 'stale', 'bland', 'generic', 'not to offend'

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I constantly request connection with other engineers and entrepreneurs in my city who get automatically suggested to me by LinkedIn. I pick those who have at least a few years of work experience. Every now and then some posts of these new connections appear on my feed and I learn a few things what moves those people. Occasionally I even personally meet fellow engineers and founders which were kind enough to reply to me. These meetings over lunch or dinner were really inspiring and I learned a lot from them.

If you happen to be a software engineer or tech founder in Berlin, please connect with me: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsalexanderblumberg/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsalexanderblumberg/)

</comment><comment><USER48> Controversial opinion: LinkedIn is a useful tool for networking, market research, and recruitment. If you don't need it for those right now, I recommend maintaining it anyway and actively expanding your network. It'll pay off down the line if/when you need to do the above.

</comment><comment><USER49> I do not have a LinkedIn profile because I've run into issue with doxxing in the past. Limiting the availability of my personal information online has always seemed like a safer bet. However, after reading through a lot of comments, there does seem to be a good amount of support for LinkedIn.

Aside from the social spam and fake recruiter pestering, can anyone speak to the value of it? There are several comments referring to multiple jobs they've received because of it. Though I have a good job now, it seems more and more that you need an online presence to land programming jobs. I'm trying to gauge whether delving into that is worth the risk of making the information available again.

</comment><comment><USER50> About 4 years ago I actively went through all my connections and only kepted the people I could see myself working with again.

I went from 350 connections to about 80. My feed became clear as a result. I also removed all the recruiters which found there way in.

</comment><comment><USER51> It can also pose a security risk. People are pretty quick to list the tech products they work with (including security products). It's a useful source for info gathering during a penetration test.

<comment><USER52> Not just in the security field, I've heard of multiple games leaked through LinkedIn as well, this [0] was the most recent one I can remember but isn't a unique example. There is certainly the opportunity to inadvertently leak sensitive information, and there are people who know this and watch the platform.

[0] [https://www.gamesradar.com/red-dead-redemption-2-is-being- ma...](https://www.gamesradar.com/red-dead-redemption-2-is-being-made-for-pc- according-to-this-physics-programmers-linkedin/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> LinkedIn is really bad at having a decent discussion. There is a limit to the comment length. It's really hard to keep track of discussion.

I find my feed relevant but the mobile experience and predictability of the timeline needs some work, imo. I'd love to have some discovery options but my timeline should be predictable.

</comment><comment><USER54> This LinkedIn who is aggressively against crawler but have broken crawlers who regular ddos some random websites?

</comment><comment><USER55> I would say that LinkedIn have had their share of controversies ranging from when they scraped their users contact lists on popular email vendors (gmail, hotmail etc), their beginnings with straight out spam marketing, the security breaches, the terrible business practices etc.

</comment><comment><USER56> LinkedIn accounts aren't quite as disposable as other social media accounts. NextDoor is similar in that regard, and while it is definitely a bit more rowdy than LinkedIn it does seem more measured and self-controlled than Twitter/Facebook/etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> LinkedIn is a place where I can have my professional profile. That is pretty much it for me. I have tried to engage otherwise on there but it is filled with spam, recruiters and other egocentric entrepreneurs and marketing people who are trying way too hard.

</comment><comment><USER58> I have deleted my LinkedIn because of constant spam, pointless contact requests, fake notifications and shady activities like that. Some people have probably taken advantage of the networking there but I found it mostly annoying so I got rid of it.

</comment><comment><USER59> LinkedIn is like the Facebook for corporate, and it's a crappy service IMO

</comment><comment><USER60> Sometimes people in my LinkedIn network share a post by a celebrity I despise. Can I avoid to see that while still seeing my contact's other posts?

</comment><comment><USER61> Why is this article getting upvotes? It says almost nothing, certainly very little interesting or actually useful

</comment><comment><USER62> I can't even talk (post) on LinkedIn using an Android phone on their website. Many of my keystrokes don't even register and they keep pushing that native app like a street corner drug dealer. This has been the case for years. It leaves me to believe the website has been purposely handicapped so that the native app becomes more attractive.

<comment><USER63> > It leaves me to believe the website has been purposely handicapped so that > the native app becomes more attractive.

This is literally true. They also have a pretty aggressive nag policy for prompting you to install the app when you use the mobile website.

Source: A couple years ago I complained to a friend who works on LI's Android team and got some details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I've never signed up for LinkedIn. What am I missing out on?

</comment><comment><USER65> LinkedIn was the first #delete for me.

</comment><comment><USER66> Has anyone else noticed that the nytimes headlines are _very_ click-baity?

</comment><comment><USER67> I like linkedIn tbh. It's a good way to talk to recruiters, and if you don't want to you can just ignore them. The feed is a cesspool of corporate propaganda and self aggrandizement, but so what? Just ignore it.

I guess I don't think that linkedIn is as much of a problem as other social networks because it's just not addictive in the same way as Facebook et al. is.

</comment><comment><USER68> Because LinkedIn does exactly what it's supposed to do, and hasn't crossed any lines that we know about?

There, wrote your entire article for you.

<comment><USER69> Collectively people seem have _terrible_ memories. LinkedIn is mega creepy. It was pulling moves like asking for email passwords and then downloading entire contact lists[1] _long_ before Facebook got in trouble for the same thing. Others here have noted LinkedIn's UI "dark patterns" which are also some of the worst in the social space.

[1] [https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/09/24/linkedin- denies-...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/09/24/linkedin-denies- charges-that-it-hacks-users-email/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> There was a comment or link I read on here several years ago that I think best defines LinkedIn - paraphrasing:

A trading card game played by white males where the aim is to amass as many connections as possible

Honestly, to the people I don't know who add me with no note, or the people who add with a generic 'I am looking to expand my professional network', or even more generic, 'I see we have connections in common' - why!?</comment>


How Can We Tell Which Election Forecasts Are True? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161013-how-can-we-tell-which-forecasts-are-true/ <comment><USER2> I find Silver's celebrity worship slightly irritating.

>FiveThirtyEight and the PEC both predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential race with spectacular accuracy.

Markos Moulitsas and Drew Linzer (Daily Kos and Votamatic respectively) were both more accurate than Silver ([https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/14/1161465/-More- accu...](https://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/14/1161465/-More-accurate- than-Nate-Silver) [http://rationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the- most-a...](http://rationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the-most- accurate-2012-election-pundit/)) AND they teamed up this year ([http://elections.dailykos.com/app/elections/2016/office/pres...](http://elections.dailykos.com/app/elections/2016/office/president)) AND The Upshot is showing their forecast as the most confident in its projections ([http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential- polls-forecast.html#other-forecasts))

Why does Silver continue to be rewarded with praise of spectacular accuracy while Markos Moulitsas and Drew Linzer don't get mentioned? Hell, Silver and Wong are products OF Daily Kos. How can you write an entire article about forecasting accuracy and not even link to their site? At least The Upshot respects them enough to include them.

<comment><USER3> 538 was big before it even went to the NYT. It was a pretty fresh take on things back then. It's not purely an academic exercise. Part of this is pure entertainment and Silver is better at that. It's a complex product he's selling and he's very good at it. I say hats off to him.

<comment><USER2> sure, but this specific article was about which election forcasts are true. Silver being the poster boy in pop culture is fine, but in this context he shouldnt be the prime example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would ask instead: what does it even mean to be "right" about a statistical probability of a future event? What does 54% chance mean vs an 84% chance when you're talking about something that's six weeks away? If the event happens or doesn't, that fact in itself does not tell you whether 54 or 84 was the right number.

Each group creating predictions builds a mathematical model that simplifies reality into a set of numbers that necessarily have large uncertainty and error built in. The models are, by design, not intended to replicate reality. They are intended to be a smaller, simplified version, retaining as many of the relevant properties as possible, but with no illusions (one hopes) that they actually represent reality. (If they did, you'd expect them to make exact predictions, not percentage chances.)

Presumably these teams do their own math "right", so the only useful question is "which model is _closer_ to reality?" But there's no way to know that, except to test them an infinite number of times, and ooops can't do that either...

<comment><USER5> It is very simple. All one has to do is imagine the election being repeated an infinity number of times under a stationary-non-changing distribution.

<comment><USER6> I realize you're joking, but if the election were repeated an infinity number of times, wouldn't the same candidate win each time?

<comment><USER5> The distribution for the roll of a die doesn't change, but the individual outcomes do.

It all boils down to how this random variable is defined.

<comment><USER6> Right, but what mechanism would change the outcome of the election if it were re-run? Are you suggesting that some percentage of people randomly choose their candidate while they are in the voting booth?

<comment><USER5> I know I do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Um, we can tell after the election is over? I mean, that's generally what a forecast is tested by - the outcome versus the prediction. Every scenario is different, so relying on one model is only good for one test I think. Not saying building models is useless, I just think the analytical part is flawed in general because it still relies on humans to respond and humans are...difficult...

I know a guy who correctly predicted the Obama/Romney popular vote outcome within 1% of each's actual take IIRC. As of now, he's got Clinton at 47% and Trump 34%, based on nothing more than personal outlook, hunches, and mulling over various polling data (he had 47% Clinton to 41% Trump just before the Conventions). Point being it might be just as likely an irrational human can point out human behavior (en masse, e.g. voting) on par with a statistical model, given some particular circumstances.

<comment><USER8> The problem with that it only tells us how good they were on election day. It'd be great to somehow evaluate their earlier predictions, which is probably only possible by looking at an aggregate of election.

(or maybe, since there are predictions and results for every state and every senate race, it's actually possible to use those for an evaluation. Note that it's not as easy as scoring a "won by trump" in favor of a forecaster who was giving trump a 60% chance. You need a measure that expects your 60% predictions to be wrong 40% of the time, like the Brier score)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Presidential election forecasts are historically successful and appear to be > highly precise. Yet they're often contradictory.

Eh, not really. Primarily elections (at all levels) are hard to predict for a number of reasons, but the presidential general election is about as straightforward as it gets.

Different forecasts vary with respect to the exact estimate and the degrees of confidence, but all the scientific, polls based approaches tend to predict the same range of outcomes. I wouldn't really call that "contradictory" for two models to give the same basic prediction but with slight differences in the errors and exact estimate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why do people care so much about polling and forecasts? Why not spend that effort on looking at issues, voting for the right people and after the election see who won? This seems a total waste of time.

<comment><USER2> the same reason fantasy football can be more fun than watching the games?

according to the forecasters the election is already over, who's model is best is the only interesting undecided component left.

right now we have an election between a Blowhard Reality Star and a Crony Crook, where most of the population would prefer neither.

so combining the realities of the choice already made (barring an insane scandal) with an election between a douche and turd sandwich, statistical models are about the only semi-honest thing we can turn to.

do you really think this election is about "the issues" and not who is better at pandering? both of their campaigns are designed to tell people what they want to hear, and figure out the rest later.

<comment><USER11> you made me happy. people need to turn this shit off. i keep seeing a commercial from somebody acutely interested in hillary getting elected: it pretends trump makes fun of kids with spinal cancer. that pretty much sums up the discourse right now, and it's not good for anybody or anything -- certainly not the direction of the nation.

<comment><USER2> it's all a distraction to give the illusion of offering participation. people can go home and feel "i contributed" having fulfilled their civic duty. everyone paying any amount of attention knows its a rigged game ten ways to sunday.

democracy in general is a feedback loop between the press and politicians with the voting population as pawns/fodder. journalists and politicians have one shared concern: staying relevant and needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A question I recall asking a Director was why were there so many PhDs in our marketing group.

They were all statisticians he said. They were brought in to support decisions marketing made because as the Director said "people believe PhDs more than us. They make our decisions believable."

Same for using JD Power. Totally result driven. They got a lot of money to produce a result.

So to me anytime I see polls the only thing that matters is the money trail.

As far as elections go, we can see the accuracy in a month.

<comment><USER8> I like how your argument flows from anti-intellectualism to conspiracies, only to end up at fatalism.

Luckily, there are people motivated by such questions. And even it may not make a difference to me except for it's entertainment value here, the impact statistics have had on our quality of life is undeniable.

There was so much invention in statistics and operations research in WW2 that you can make a credible case that it was the ally's decisive advantage. Since then, medical research comes to mind as field where it has been useful to have people who don't answer "dunno – why don't you wait a month and see" but "I think this may be possible."

<comment><USER12> Some things you can change the outcome by making decisions partially based on statistics. Like who to choose for a hip replacement. Do you go to a hospital that does only orthopedics or a general one?

I recall the event as a young marketer / techie because I always thought I wanted a PhD. But when I saw how far they were away from business decisions being only support I knew a PhD at this company was not for me.

There are people who earn a living with polls. This is a not-so-bad way to spend ones time. There are worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> By doing the experiment and letting the election happen.

Experiment is the arbiter of truth.

<comment><USER14> But say, a forecast says candidates A, B and C have 40%, 35% and 25% chance of winning. Now the election happens, and one of them wins. Was the forecast true?

<comment><USER2> that is what confidence is for ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score))

"The reason for this is that pundits (the better ones, anyway) don't just predict election outcomes, they also tell you how confident they are in each of their predictions. For example, Silver gave Obama a 50.3% chance of winning in Florida. That's pretty damn close to 50/50 or "even odds." So if Romney had won Florida, Silver would have been wrong, but only a little wrong. In contrast, Silver's forecast was 92% confident that Rick Berg would win a Senate seat in North Dakota, but Berg lost. For that prediction, Silver was a lot wrong. Still, predictions with 92% confidence should be wrong 8% of the time (otherwise, that 92% confidence is underconfident), and Silver made a lot of correct predictions. So how can we tell who did best? We need a method that accounts not just for the predicted outcomes, but also for the confidence of each prediction. There are many ways you can score predictions to reward accuracy and punish arrogance, but most of them are gameable, for example by overstating one's true beliefs. The methods which aren't cheatable — where you score best if you are honest — are all called "proper scoring rules." One of the most common proper scoring rules is the Brier score. A Brier score is simply a number between 0 and 1, and as with golf, a lower score is better."

[http://rationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the- most-a...](http://rationality.org/2012/11/09/was-nate-silver-the-most- accurate-2012-election-pundit/)

"Also note that Wang & Ferguson got a better Brier score than Silver despite getting Florida (barely) wrong while Silver got Florida right. The Atlantic Wire gave Wang & Ferguson only a "Silver Star" for this reason, but our more detailed analysis shows that Wang & Ferguson probably should have gotten a "Gold Star.""

<comment><USER15> "So if Romney had won Florida, Silver would have been wrong, but only a little wrong."

No, Silver would not have been wrong at all, or at least we'll never know. He doesn't predict a winner; he gives probabilities of victory. It would have been perfectly consistent with Obama having a 50.3% chance of winning (or 63.5% or 32.8% or 99.9% or whatever probability you want to assign) and then for Romney to have won. Even after the election was over, a Florida victory for Romney would not have meant that Silver's pre-election probability assignment of 50.3% to Obama was wrong. That's not how probabilities work.

Think of sporting events. A huge underdog with only, say, a 2% chance of winning may beat the favorite. This does not mean that it had better than a 2% chance of winning before the event. Depending on the reason for the underdog's victory, it may not even mean that the underdog has better than a 2% chance of winning if they play again. One in a million events happen, and it doesn't mean that their chances of happening were greater than one in a million.

<comment><USER2> read the last quoted sentence

<comment><USER15> Not sure which sentence you're referring to. And I'm not saying there's no way to tell which probability assignments are better. I'm just saying that the mere fact that an event assigned a lower probability happens (e.g., if Romney would have beaten Obama in Florida) does not mean the assignments were wrong.

This is consistent with Silver's own explanations of what he's doing, and (I'm pretty sure ) he is careful to say he doesn't make "predictions". (Actually, not sure, it may be merely that he often clarifies that a different result than predicted does not make the probability assignment that prompted the prediction "wrong". The prediction and the probability analysis it's based on are different things.) I'm not saying that the Brier Score can't differentiate between better and worse probability assignments, but I am saying it's confusing the issue if it calls probability assignments "right" or "wrong". They may be "better" or "worse" than each other, but not "right" or "wrong". This may be using language in more technical manner, but it seems to me (and to Silver) to be an important distinction.

<comment><USER2> "Also note that Wang & Ferguson got a better Brier score than Silver despite getting Florida (barely) wrong while Silver got Florida right. The Atlantic Wire gave Wang & Ferguson only a "Silver Star" for this reason, but our more detailed analysis shows that Wang & Ferguson probably should have gotten a "Gold Star.""

I think being concerned about this authors usage of the words "right and wrong" misses the point. The media will say "you were wrong" if you were on the wrong side of a 51/49% prediction, even if you shouldn't be penalized for it. Wang & Ferguson got dinged by The Atlantic Wire for being wrong, when they shouldnt have. The last quote in my post, supports your point. The person who is least wrong is the person with the lowest aggregate Brier score. The author was using right and wrong, because the articles they were referencing used those terms. The quote was written with the colloquial language of what it addressed.

<comment><USER15> We're not too far off. Main thng in original quote that bothered me was "So if Romney had won Florida, Silver would have been wrong, but ONLY A LITTLE WRONG." Predictions of victory or loss are either right or wrong. There are not degrees of rightness or wrongness with the prediction; it's either right or wrong.

The probability analysis that the prediction is based on does admit of degrees; one probability assignment may be better or worse than another. But saying a prediction is "only a little wrong" implicitly refers to the probability assignment it was based on; it confuses the concepts of "prediction" and "probability". The probability assignment was not necessarily "wrong" to assign a higher probability to the event that didn't occur. It may have been a bad probability assignment, but discerning that would involve considering factors other than the outcome of the event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can't. A forecast is just that - a prediction.

</comment><comment><USER17> Based on past history, we can assume they have to give Trump a higher than average of the current polls chance to win.

<comment><USER18> What do you mean?

<comment><USER19> Silver consistently underestimated Trump's chances in the primaries. He has yet to explain what he did wrong then or how he has fixed it now. If you don't want a Trump presidency, Silver's current projections shouldn't be very comforting.

<comment><USER18> Right, but a lot of other poll aggregators who don't have that baggage are also predicting a Clinton win, many with higher confidence than Nate Silver.

<comment><USER19> Did their polling analysis correctly predict Trump's nomination?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There are a number of emails leaked from various election polling companies which indicate intent to spin the results and induce a particular outcome.

<comment><USER21> That would explain why campaign intern polling is always such a sacred ground.

<comment><USER22> There are simpler reasons. Being able to direct the polling is useful (spend resources on a given issue or not). Being able to spend more polling resources on close races. Having guaranteed access to the internals of the poll. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Read to the end:

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-11/first-post- debate-p...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-11/first-post-debate-poll- gives-hillary-significant-lead-and-familiar-problem-emerges)

Edit: Correction noted.

Post debate NBC/WSJ poll was conducted by group specifically paid by the Clinton campaign. Not exactly what you'd want for a major poll.

<comment><USER24> ...ZeroHedge? Really?

<comment><USER23> Ad hominem.

Can you dispute the damning evidence?

<comment><USER25> Just read the posts and comments there - lots of CT + right-leaning discussion that seems curiously aligned with alt-right ideology.

ie, more heat, less light.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Connect the dots, to build system models in wiki way, in web way from a browser - <AUTHOR> http://systemmodeling.net

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a scalable way to illustrate system models, to share and co-edit a knowledge base.</comment>


Things I Do With My Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://magnatecha.com/things-i-do-with-my-raspberry-pi/ <comment><USER2> One thing that doesn't often get mentioned is that a Pi is a pretty decent way to play around with Risc Os. Probably better than digging up some old Archimedes/RiscPC or the overpriced replacement machines.

<comment><USER3> Risc OS is seriously underrated. It's so lightweight. Makes it super easy to play around with low level hardware stuff. It was made at a time when a couple of megabytes of RAM was huge and processor speeds were measured in low double digit MHz so it absolutely flies on the Pi.

<comment><USER4> It's not that it's underrated, it's mostly unknown.

<comment><USER5> I think the licence would make a lot of people skip over it; it seems to have far fewer features than Linux as well. I'm not saying it isn't cool, but reading their site and Wikipedia nothing is jumping out at me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're going to use the raspberry pi to do file sharing type things, i highly recommend checking out bittorrent sync.

it allows you to turn the pi into your own cloud server.

<comment><USER7> I better check again, but the ARM build of btsync was very unstable, even to the level of causing a kernel panic on one of my Pi boards.

<comment><USER8> For me, I've never had any serious issues like that. BT Sync has been a little finicky in some cases and it looks like some files don't get synced over, but it does work relatively well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just finished setting up my raspberry pi as a personal router / firewall, to redirect my internet traffic over a VPN to a server i set up in europe. I'm building a chrome extension, and matching node.js app to allow to me toggle the routing on the raspberry pi from within my browser.

I got sick of fighting my isp's throttling rules, which kicked in at the most frustrating and inopportune times, like halfway through downloading linux ISO's to play with on my raspberry pi.

<comment><USER9> But you're still throttled when you try to bring the data home...

<comment><USER10> I read that as his ISP uses traffic shaping - so bittorrent connections are uniformly throttled (when when the content is completely legal) yet VPN is not. So he tunnels his torrents through VPN.

I have the same annoying problems - particularly as I like to offer up my bandwidth for Linux ISOs and creative commons works (I don't always contribute money to these projects (wife+kids usually see my wages before I do) so it's nice to contribute something even if the net effect is minute). Yet HTTP/HTTPS is completely unthrottled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> About audio:

The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be torture.) Rather get a USB sound card and hook it up to your pi.

Also try out MPD (Music Player Daemon) if you want a juke box. MPD clients are widely available for any platform - you can sit on the couch and control your pi's MPD with a client running on your phone.

<comment><USER10> _> The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be torture.) Rather get a USB sound card and hook it up to your pi._

The problem is much more likely to be the DAC rather than the audio jack. However using a USB audio adapter may fix that as well as they'd have their own DAC. Earlier in this thread I did discuss another issue with audio on the Pi though: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424)

 _> Also try out MPD (Music Player Daemon) if you want a juke box. MPD clients are widely available for any platform - you can sit on the couch and control your pi's MPD with a client running on your phone._

Funny enough I did address that in this thread as well: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949)

<comment><USER12> IIRC the analogue audio out on a Pi is fairly low quality: It's a 1-bit PWM signal @ 100MHz. That's about 11bits of SNR for a standard audio input supposedly.

Use the HDMI audio, or a USB audio device if you want decent quality sound out of a Pi.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Sadly HDMI audio isn't an option and any of the decent USB audio adapters would either be too bulky and/or too expensive (ie the additional cost renders the saving made by using a Raspberry Pi pointless).

As much as I'm an audiophile at times (less so now than I used to be), this is only being used as an in-car MP3 / FLAC player. My car speakers are much worse than the spec of the Pi's audio chipset. In fact they're not even balanced right so my next job is applying some bespoke EQing to the output in real time (hopefully the Pi will be powerful enough to perform this) to lessen the harshness of the heavy top-end and complete lack of sound in the mid-range frequencies (whoever authorised the inbuilt sound system in my car was clearly death!)

Thankfully I can usually distract myself from the shit sound quality by driving :P But sometimes (usually when really tired) it's too annoying to bare. Which is a pity as I love most other things about that car.

<comment><USER12> You can pick up a tiny USB sound device from eBay for £1.50 including postage that will probably have better specs than the Pi analogue audio output. It'll get rid of that annoying clicking as well.

If you're tight for space, then that might be a problem, but the cost of these things is negligible these days.

<comment><USER10> I take it you didn't read my post that you original replied to ;) (I jest because I raised each of those points myself).

Sadly space is the issue. The one I bought (which was more along the lines of £3) sadly pushes the dimensions of the device I'm building much too much. At some point I'm going to have to re-investigate the issue though - as I plan on adding voice control which means I'll need a mic in.

As for sound quality, that's really a non-issue given the it's going in a car with crappy speakers. So there's no point wasting money on a decent audio chip if I can't reproduce that sound accurately. (in an ideal world, I'd throw in some zero frequency curve studio monitors and use my spare Terratec Phase 96 as the Pi's sound device - but then the price really starts to jump. So instead I make do with what I've got)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Things I use my Raspberry Pi for:

* Controlling my TV/AC/other infrared devices around the house: [http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-turn-your-raspberry-pi-infra...](http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-turn-your-raspberry-pi-infrared-remote-control/)

* Controlling my garage door/RF sockets/other RF stuff around the house (pretty good range on this, too): [http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-ra...](http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-raspberry-pi/)

* Writing an Android app to make HTTP calls to the Go server that launches the LIRC process, really low latency: [http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-turn-your-raspberry-pi-infra...](http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-turn-your-raspberry-pi-infrared-remote-control/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I was using my pi as an airplay receiver for my hi-fi. I'm not sure if they fixed it yet but the analog out was pretty bad (8kHz mono at the tome) but I know the audio quality could be better. So I stopped that then played Minecraft, now I use it to SSH into my house and WOL my ESXi servers, get the ipmi data from the servers and some simple Node stuff.

This is the Pi B v1 (256MB) I'm thinking about getting a v2 now.

<comment><USER10> I have a Pi B v1 and it's analogue out is definitely stereo. The problem I had (which is persistent right across their range of boards) is the popping sound that happens at the start of audio because of the voltage change on the chip. There's been some workarounds to try and reduce the severity of the popping (namely building a fast volume change at the start of clips and using an "always on" sound server like Pulse. But annoyingly the only real fix seems to be to using a cheap USB audio adapter. So I've now come to the conclusion that the Raspberry Pi isn't the best development board for audio projects. However for $35, I have no regrets in buying one (in fact I still bought a 2nd one even after learning about the aforementioned issues).

<comment><USER15> Not of a great help for audio projects but Raspbmc has fixed that popping sound issue in quite a transparent way.

<comment><USER10> You can't "fix" the popping sound issue in software as it's a hardware issue. What Raspbmc does is use is the PulseAudio workaround that I'd described in my previous post.

<comment><USER15> I understand, I just wanted to point out it was transparent to the user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice list. With regards to your choice of music player, I know you said you just wanted something easy to set up, but you might be better off with _mpd_ as you can use a whole bunch of different front ends to it; from web front ends and native binary GUIs, through to command line clients. There's even smartphone apps, so you can use your phone or tablet as a remote control to your hifi.

</comment><comment><USER16> I am using my Raspberry Pi to record temperatures and humidity in my apartment. After recording I generate nice charts using the HighCharts library: [http://thule.mine.nu/html](http://thule.mine.nu/html)

How I did it: [http://thule.mine.nu/html/about.html](http://thule.mine.nu/html/about.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> I use mine as Minecraft consoles for my kids. The next step is to teach them Python and the API and let them modify their games.

<comment><USER18> I'm surprised No Starch or PeachPit haven't brought out "Minecraft Modding" books. They'd make a freaking fortune.

<comment><USER19> Minecraft modding is changing far too fast, by the time a book was written, edited, and published, it'd likely be largely obsolete, by my judgement. In fact just today the release of Minecraft 1.6 has pretty much obsoleted "jarmods" (direct replacement of classes in the minecraft.jar) by Mojang's new launcher, not to mention a brand new resource pack system obsoleting texture packs, as well as a large amount of internal refactoring.

This pattern has repeated throughout Minecraft's release cycle. Though with Minecraft 1.0 it is no longer considered in "beta", each major version has brought incompatible changes. Mojang doesn't use semantic versioning, needless to say. Had a book been written around 1.2, it would have undoubtedly focused on the singleplayer/multiplayer split, and the steps needed for modders to develop SSP-only or SMP-compatible mods, but this distinction was blurred or eliminated in 1.3. 1.3 was mostly a dead zone for modding, only to come back in 1.4. With 1.4 we saw the introduction of new server implementations or administration mods, combining either analogous functionality or proper support for both leading modding frameworks, Forge and Bukkit (including MCPC+, BukkitForge, ForgeEssentials, etc.).

Modding toolkits come and go: about a mere year ago, you might be modding with ModLoader, ModLoaderMP, AudioMod. Or pure Minecraft Coder Pack (MCP), with no APIs. Or lesser-known custom APIs. Nowadays, Forge ModLoader has basically taken over ModLoader, and many modders have been moving to Forge for compatibility and other reasons. IndustrialCraft, BuildCraft, Mystcraft, Forestry.. all leaders in the Forge modding world. But there are still factions of modders sticking with Risugami ML, or even using raw jarmod edits like Better than Wolves. Not to mention - server-only "plugin" development using Bukkit is almost a completely separate community. You have the vanilla original CraftBukkit server implementation, then performance-focused forks like Spigot, or other forks with their own goals like SportBukkit, Libigot, or the mod-compatible MCPC+.. each with their own benefits. Fortunately most have similar plugin compatibility, but a few add new APIs, or otherwise change Minecraft behavior..

Bottom line, Minecraft modding is a hodgepodge of often-incompatible rapidly- changing frameworks, built on an unstable rapidly-changing foundation (which is obfuscated and has to be reverse-engineered each release, nonetheless). There have been advancements to streamline this problem, and it is getting better, but we're not out of the woods yet. Even tutorials you can find online for modding – such as on the Minecraft Forge wiki, are frequently outdated. A book would even be more so.

Nonetheless, I think you're right, it would be very nice if someone could pull it off, putting out an informative yet updated book on Minecraft modding. Maybe things will settle down and stabilize after the infamous Mojang modding/plugin API is released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use mine as an always-on home print server. I might come up with another good use case for it later, but I'm good for now.

</comment><comment><USER21> RE: file sharing/local NAS

Do any of you guys experience a bottleneck on the RPi's 100Mbps nic?

<comment><USER22> It's a known issue (!?) [http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4592](http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4592)

<comment><USER21> Thanks tuananh, I was wondering this. I've been debating between an RPi or a WD My Book Live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My Hdmi doesn't seem to work on my pi anymore. Should I get a new one?

<comment><USER24> There's plenty of uses for Raspberry Pi that doesn't need video output. Install a SSH server and run it headless.

Alternatively use composite video out. Raspberry Pis are cheap, so getting another Model B (or Model A) for HD video output isn't a big deal..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I trid ZoneMinder on raspberry as security camera, but it lags a lot

<comment><USER26> Zoneminder grinds my dual-core Atom to a halt. Try 'motion' for a simpler system (well, simple if you like config-file setup) with about 25% of the CPU usage. Plus, the viewing interface is just 'cd /motion; ls *avi' rather than the slow and clunky web interface of ZM.

<comment><USER27> It'd be interesting if someone could hack together something like motion, but takes advantage of hardware h.264 encoding. Even if just for still frames.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is it really a good idea to put your email on a device like a Pi?

<comment><USER29> considering you can get a fail-over for another 30$, why not?

the pi is a just a tiny computer, the usual rules and best practices apply.

ffs, if you want, you can run a mail server on your _phone_ which has more raw computing power than a pi and similar power consumption.

<comment><USER30> That'd be an interesting project to further subvert the unlimited data that carriers hate.</comment></comment></comment>


7nm AMD EPYC "Rome" CPU with 64C/128T to Cost $8K (56 Core Intel Xeon: $25K-50K) - <AUTHOR> https://www.techquila.co.in/7nm-amd-epyc-rome-cpu-64/ <comment><USER2> I do have an AMD Hackintosh, I don't see any reason you wouldn't be able to use these as a dev Hackintosh machine. It's gorgeously fast with my Ryzen 2700x, eats compilation time like no one's business and it's stable. And it's something around 1/4th the price of the same horsepower from native Intel Macs. I can't imagine the cost delta of a EPYC Rome Hackintosh to its Intel counterpart.

It's not like I cheaped out either, I have the same cheese-grater like anodised dark grey aluminium case with impeccable internal structure for easy upgrades. (Link to case: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNsHS2U8RM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcNsHS2U8RM))

<comment><USER3> How about those adobe applications? I heard that PS, Pr, or Ai need special patch to run on amd machines

<comment><USER2> I'm actually a designer, but I stopped using Adobe a very long time ago for unrelated reasons — when they switched to the subscription model. For that reason I didn't even try to run them.

I do realise that might be an untenable position for someone in Hollywood since FCPX is not a match for Premiere / After Effects at that level, however, there are plenty of other things that do the job of Photoshop and Illustrator, and they are not _alternatives_ , Sketch is genuinely vastly better than Illustrator, and for Photoshop, there have been quite a few alternatives that the whole class of image manipulation apps got commoditised.

<comment><USER3> I still will use adobe apps and the main reason is my university offer them for free. But I agree adobe's subscription is an overkill for personal use

<comment><USER2> That's Adobe's way of getting you hooked. It was the same for me at my college. It took me a long time to port my muscle memory to Sketch.

If I had an advice to give to my college self, I would advise not even starting with Adobe: if you're a designer and use their tools, the tools you need to make money with isn't even available for sale, you can only rent. So you might end up in a place where Adobe jacks up the price of Creative Suite by 10-100x per month after becoming dominant like Oracle, and you would have to pay your dues to their feudal fiefdom just to be able to continue your profession - else you'll starve. Not a great place to be for anyone.

<comment><USER4> FWIW that's exactly why Microsoft office and windows is so prolific, it's what people know from school so it's not even a conversation on switching.

Even if Microsoft is gauging companies with licenses.

<comment><USER5> And exactly why Google responded with chromebooks and free gsuite for education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious why they aren't charging more for it. Wouldn't that be free profit margin?

Or perhaps they are trying to hurt Intel by selling it at a price where Intel can't make a profit if they lower their prices to be competitive?

Or, maybe it has to do with trying to quickly grab market share. Maybe AWS and other purchases of servers have a somewhat fixed budget, so cheaper chips translates directly to more chips sold?

Both those explanations seem unlikely to me.

<comment><USER7> Only AMD execs truly knows but I think there might be two factors involved. They really want to attract new customers and build echo system and the second part is hard when everyone has been buying almost entirely intel. The second is their cost for such a cheap should be enormously cheaper than intel because of chiplet design. A single chip die for the intel chip is way bigger and yield and cost dramatically increases as die size gets bigger from what I read. So at same profit margin AMD chips would be cheaper and to gain the market share they are probably willing to lower their profit too so those two element adds up.

<comment><USER8> Note that this chip cost increase is due to silicon defects, a larger chip has more defects, thus your failure rate significantly increases with each increase in chip area.

AMD is working around this by using 8 separate CPU chips, wired together with one interconnect chip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that the 1P variant costs only $4,955, or under $80 per core. The consumer chips cost roughly $50/core, making this the flattest ramp I can personally remember.

<comment><USER10> That is the brilliance of Chiplet strategy. Those 74nm 7nm Die are extremely cost effective. ( For reference they are even smaller than the SoC used in iPhone ) The 14nm I/O die ( 400mm2 ) seems to be most expensive part. I wonder what cost improvement could be done in that area.

And Note: That 5K CPU has 256 _MB_ of L3 Cache. May be I could Run the OS not in RAM, but in Cache.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Note regarding Note: It actually has 16*16MB cache. The L3 is split into 16MB segments per CCX, and organized as a victim cache taking lines evicted from the 4 local L2 caches. That is, a single core cannot ever write to more than 16.5MB of cache.

So there's not really any way to run system out of only cache, outside the tiny examples of early boot where all CPUs do this.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. Didn't come to my mind when I was writing that. So I stand corrected.

I wonder if one day we put even more cache in the I/O Die. Or even Stacked DRAM directly on top of it.

<comment><USER11> There have been a few Intel processors with "L4 cache" (meant to be used as iGPU memory, and only if unused work as L4 cache) as listed here [0]. Broadwell was the only generation to have desktop processors with the eDRAM chip sitting by the side of the processor. Now it's only on a few higher end ultrabook processors [1, 2] -- look for those listed with L4 cache.

[0] [https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/broadw...](https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/broadwell_\(client\)#Memory_Hierarchy)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)#Mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_\(microarchitecture\)#Mobile_processors)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake#Mobile_processors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaby_Lake#Mobile_processors)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Back in the early 2000s Apple was getting crushed because Moto/IBM's PowerPC couldn't keep up with the 880lb gorilla Intel. Who could have predicted even a few years ago Apple would wind up in a similar situation, yet this time for having bet on Intel?

Could the 8 core Mac Pro have been $3650 with a $650 Rome CPU, vs. the reality of $6k with a $3k Xeon?

<comment><USER3> I suspect apple will release comps with amd cpus, but hackintosh with amd is already good to go

<comment><USER13> They are stuck with intel because of thunderbolt.

<comment><USER3> actually Asrock release X570 for ryzen2 with PCIE4 and thunderbolt 3 ([https://www.anandtech.com/show/14455/asrock-x570-aqua- heavie...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/14455/asrock-x570-aqua-heaviest- flagship-motherboard-ever-with-thunderbolt)).

<comment><USER13> Now that's some great news. I want an AMD Apple system now.

<comment><USER3> The downside is the motherboard is pretty expensive. And I don't think many people would buy a motherboard more expensive than the cpu on board. ASRock might offer a few more X570 mb with tb3, but I haven't checked

<comment><USER14> If it's baked into an iMac / Mac Pro, what proportion of the potential market are actually going to delve that deeply into the components? I'd wager probably single digit %.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Finding mainstream vendor offerings has been a bit more difficult with AMD. We recently bought 2 E-2146G servers from Dell (preferred vendor at the org.) because anything AMD was only offered as a 2 processor server which was overkill for the application. I would have gladly purchased AMD based servers instead if they were priced closely.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't believe 64 core, 3.35GHz at 200 Watt. Previous numbers for 64 core were around 2.2GHz.

Looks like clickbait to me.

<comment><USER17> 3.35GHz is max boost frequency, they don't list the base clock speed. Last gen was 2.7-3.2 for the high-end chip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you need AVX/AVX2/AVX512 then go intel. Otherwise this AMD chip would be my choice for most applications.

<comment><USER19> What software is typically able to take advantage of these instructions?

My use case is solving large LP/MIP problems for power markets, do those algorithms benefit?

<comment><USER20> Depends on the structure of your problem. Some lend themselves well to vectorization, others not nearly as much. Or at least the needed vectorized solvers are not yet available for some problem structures.

Try to use perf-tools to determine how you're currently using these execution units, and then you can look how much it might help. Rule of thumb: double the bitwidth of vector instructions gets you 80% more speed, instead of the theoretical 100%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dis-sys For those who might be interested for a cheaper alternative -

Intel Xeon 8280 QS is $1,800 USD each, a pair of those (56 cores) on a supermicro mb with 12 x 16G RAM is about $5k USD. It has an impressive Cinebench R15 score of 7,800+

<comment><USER21> Where do you get the $1,800 price? Intel says the recommended price is around $10,000:

[https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192478/...](https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/192478/intel- xeon-platinum-8280-processor-38-5m-cache-2-70-ghz.html)

<comment><USER22> OP said "QS" these are grey market chips, QS means Qualification Sample, Intel sends them to various manufacturers to test with motherboards and then they leak into the grey market. They are not retail so frequency and other characteristics might differ -- but even their stability might not be as high as a retail one. Although QS is usually better at this, it's ES (Engineering Sample) which can be very dicey.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Black market, not grey market. QS are loaned on terms that explicitly prohibit resale. If you buy them, you are purchasing stolen goods.

<comment><USER23> No, you are not.

You voiding your contract with Intel does not make me a criminal. At best this is a civil tort.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Now that you know that they are all property of Intel, yes it does.

Trafficking in stolen property is illegal in all 50 states, although the severity and specifics vary. If you buy them across state lines, 18 U.S. Code § 2315 also applies, making it a federal crime.

And taking and selling the QS/ES chips is not "voiding your contract". It is theft, and given the value of the chips, would qualify as a felony.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Middle-class Californians feeling surprised, dismayed by higher ObamaCare costs - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-health-sticker-shock-20131027,0,4888906,full.story#axzz2izRoYTzv

<comment><USER2> > Some consumer groups have questioned whether insurers are inflating their > rates under the guise of the healthcare law changes.

They probably aren't doing it too much, because there is limited value to be gained (due to refund-of-excess-premiums provisions that went into effect earlier than the other changes); there is, however, an interesting positive feedback loop between _assumptions_ about healthy young people opting out, actual pricing decisions, and the actual number of healthy young people who opt out. So, its quite likely that the premium increases that will drive some young healthy people to opt out and pay the penalty instead are in part a result of the assumption that young, healthy people will opt-out and pay the penalty instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> "She said, 'I was all for Obamacare until I found out I was paying for it,'" Kehaly said."

Lesson: Never give a sucker an even break.

<comment><USER4> I like H. L. Mencken's quote for this: " _Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard._ "</comment></comment>